Read Online The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton - Free Book Online Page B

Lowering the dip, he pointed out a short length of what looked like brass curtain rod, strong but hollow, perched on a stone at the bottom of the well and leaning against the side. The top of this rod protruded slightly above the mouth of the drain. The grating, when in place, lay loosely on its worn rim of cement. Spiller explained how, by exerting all his strength on the rod from below, he could raise one corner of the grating—as a washerwoman with a prop can raise up a clothesline. He would then slide the base of the prop onto the raised stone in the base of the shaft, thus holding the contraption in place. Spiller would then swing himself up to the mouth of the drain on a piece of twine tied to a rung of the grating. "Only about twice my height," he explained. The twine, Pod gathered, was a fixture. The double twist round the light iron rung was hardly noticeable from above, and the length of the twine, when not in use, hung downwards into the drain. Should Spiller want to remove the grating entirely, as was the case today, after scrambling through the aperture raised by the rod, he would pull the twine after him, fling it around one of the stays of the mangle above his head, and would drag and pull on the end. Sometimes, Spiller explained, the grating slid easily; at other times it stuck on an angle. In which event, Spiller would produce a small but heavy bolt, kept specially for the purpose, which he would wind into the free end of his halyard and, climbing into the girder-like structure at the base of the mangle, would swing himself out on the bolt, which, sinking under his weight, exerted a pull on the grating.
    "Very ingenious," said Pod. Dip in hand he went deeper under the mangle, examined the wet twine, pulled on the knots, and finally, as though to test its weight, gave the grating a shove. It slid smoothly on the worn flagstones. "Easier to shove than to lift," he remarked. Arrietty, glancing upwards, saw vast shadows on the washhouse ceiling—moving and melting, advancing and receding—in the flickering light from their dips: great wheels, handles, rollers, shifting spokes ... as though, she thought, the mangle under which they stood was silently and magically turning....
    On the ground, beside the drain, she saw an object she recognized: the lid of an aluminum soapbox, the one in which the summer before last Spiller had spun her down the river, and from which he used to fish. It was packed now with some kind of cargo and covered with a piece of worn hide—possibly a rat skin—strapped over lid and all with lengths of knotted twine. From a hole bored in one end of the rim a second piece of twine protruded. "I pull her up by that," explained Spiller, following the direction of her eyes.
    "I see how you get up," said Homily unhappily, peering into the slime, "but it's how you get down that worries me."
    "Oh, you just drop," said Spiller. He took hold of the twine as he spoke and began to drag the tin lid away toward the door.
    "It's all right, Homily," Pod promised hurriedly, "we'll let you down on the bolt," and he turned quickly to Spiller. "Where you going with that?" he asked.
    Spiller, it seemed, not wishing to draw attention to the drain, was going to unpack next door. The house being free of humans and the log box pulled out, there was no need to go upstairs. He could dump what he'd brought beside the hole in the skirting.
    While he was gone, Pod outlined a method of procedure. "...if Spiller agrees," he kept saying, courteously conceding the leadership.
    Spiller did agree, or rather he raised no objections. The empty soapbox lid, lightly dangling, was lowered onto the mud; into this they dropped the egg—rolling it to the edge of the drain as though it were a giant rugby football, with a final kick from Pod to send it spinning and keep it clear of the sides. It plopped into the soapbox lid with an ominous crack. This did not matter, however, the egg being hard-boiled.
    Homily, with not a few nervous